Boy, I Hear You In My Dreams
by piperkathleenpotter
Summary: When Quinn Fabray wakes up in the middle of the night, shaking from the remnants of an unexpected dream, she realizes that it's time again to be brave.
1. Chapter 1

At 2'o'clock in the morning, Quinn Fabray sat bolt upright in her bed with a rough, hoarse gasp. She pressed a shaking hand to her heart, as if she could sooth its violent pounding with touch alone.

What the hell was _that?_

Her sheets were tangled around her legs. Both pillows had been knocked to the floor. She kicked herself free and drew her knees to her chest, burying her face against them. She was trying to dispel the images that played across her mind like shadows against a wall—a flash of blonde hair; the reach of a tanned, strong arm; the muscles of his back, moving with an animalistic grace as he seized her waist.

It wasn't a nightmare. It would have been one thing if it had been—Quinn hadn't had a problem with chasing away ghoulish creatures of her imagination since she was eight.

No, it was something entirely different, entirely unexpected, and entirely unwanted.

A—she could barely even think the word, as if letting it form in her mind was some sort of absolution that she refused to give these feelings—sex dream.

About Sam Evans.

Quinn stumbled out of bed, hating the way her legs were weak and shaking. It had been the most vivid dream she'd ever had: she'd been able to smell the fresh, grassy scent of his soap, taste the lemon-flavored chapstick that she had seen him apply to his lips a few times in Glee Club. And she had felt a raw, almost harsh desire that was alien to her in her waking life, which she honestly preferred.

She could still hear his voice in her ear, crooning her praises, asking—begging—if he could touch her here, touch her there. _"I want you, Quinn. I want you so much."_

Questioning her sanity as she did so, calling herself every name in the book, Quinn grabbed her phone from where it was charging on her desk. The only reason she even had his number was because he'd given it to her when they were practicing their duet.

_Lucky I'm in love with my best friend,_

_Lucky to have been where I have been,_

_Lucky to be coming home again._

She bit her lip, scrolling through her contacts list until she came to Sam's number. She navigated her way to a blank text message, and—before she could chastise herself one more time, before she could remind herself that it was two in the morning and he probably wasn't awake anyway, before she could scare these strange but horribly inviting emotions away—she typed out a message:

_Hey, it's Quinn. I was wondering if you wanted to hang out tomorrow. It's supposed to be super nice out, so I was thinking we could go to the park. Maybe have a picnic?_

Her hands shaking harder than ever, she put her phone down and turned away, trying to calm her erratic breathing so she could actually go back to sleep. It was way too late to expect him to be awake; she would just have to wait til an earthly hour to get a reply—if he even wanted to answer, considering the way she'd made it very clear that their dinner at Breadstix was only because they'd won fair and square and deserved the meal. It wasn't a date, she'd insisted.

But now she wanted it to be, and it was probably too late.

She was stopped by a low, familiar buzzing sound: her phone, vibrating against the desk. Quinn turned too hastily, almost fell, and managed to catch herself on the desk chair. She snatched up her phone, her heart lodged solidly in her throat.

_I was afraid you'd never ask. I'll bring my mom's potato salad. Unless you don't like potato salad. Then I can totally bring something else._

She laughed out loud, because she could almost hear him saying it in an eager, excited rush and picture him smiling as he did. She was in the middle of typing her reply—_Sounds good. I love potato salad.—_when another incoming message interrupted her, also from Sam.

_This is a date, right? Please say it's a date, Quinn._

Quinn hesitated. She thought of her dream, how the thing that had bothered her the most wasn't that the dream had been startlingly graphic, or even that she'd had it at all. Sam made her feel…good. Safe. Wanted. She didn't want to rely on anyone to feel like that, because once you did, it was so easy to get hurt, so easy to have it taken away from you.

But maybe Sam was different. And that was what scared her most of all—she so desperately wanted him to be different.

_Yes, _she responded. _It's a date. _


	2. Chapter 2

Quinn closed her eyes, utterly relaxed, her head pillowed on Sam's chest. Between the heat of his body against hers and the gentle caress of the sun on her face, she felt like she was floating in a pool of warm water, more serene and content than she had ever been in her life.

She and Sam lay on a blue gingham blanket, in a grassy corner of the park that was deserted except for a little boy and his father, who were throwing a Frisbee for their dog. Sam was absently stroking her arm, turning his head every now and then to kiss her hair.

"Hey, Quinn?" he said, and she opened her eyes, looking up at the sky.

"Yeah?"

"I'm really, really happy right now."

She smiled and sat up, leaning over him so that she was the only thing he could see, which appeared to suit him just fine. When Quinn bent her neck just enough, her lips hovered right above his. "Me too," she said.

The way Sam was looking at her sent a pleasantly tingly sensation through the pit of her stomach. Sam reached up and gathered the curtain of Quinn's hair in one hand, lightly pushing it behind her shoulder, leaving his palm against her cheek.

A little hum of pleasure slipped out of Quinn's mouth, and Sam grinned, stroking her cheekbone with his thumb. Quinn's eyelids fluttered shut again.

_Kiss me, _she begged silently. _Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me._

Sam's hand moved to the back of her neck, exerting a gentle pressure. She responded to it unthinkingly, every fiber of her body raw with this electric sensation.

"Ken and Barbie kissing in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G—!"

They broke apart, Quinn balancing on her knees and Sam propping himself up on an elbow. The boy, who had previously been a safe distance away with his father and their Labrador, was now less than five feet away from them, clutching the errant Frisbee that had been blown off course.

Quinn's first instinct was to snap at the kid—she had been so close to kissing Sam that they had been practically breathing the same air—but Sam just smiled at him.

"Hey," he said. "Great dog."

The boy beamed, as if the animal had been entirely of his own making. "Thanks. Her name is Sasha."

"Oh, Sasha," Sam said seriously, nodding. "Yeah, that's a perfect name for her."

This time, the boy positively wriggled with happiness. "I picked it out!"

"Wow!" Sam exclaimed, matching the child's enthusiasm. "Quinn, did you hear that? This kid picked Sasha's name."

"Th-that's awesome," Quinn managed, now so enamored with Sam Evans that she had devoted one part of her mind to spinning fantasies of churches and wedding bands and flowers.

From the path that lead to the rest of the park, the boy's father called out to him. "Lucas! Come on, hon, it's time to go home."

Waving, the boy threw the Frisbee toward his father, right on Sasha's heels as she chased after it.

A breeze sprung up, stirring the detritus of the picnic that had been scattered around them—the plastic wrap that had covered the potato salad, the paper plates and plastic cutlery, the baggies that'd held grapes and Doritos and PB&J sandwiches. One flew directly into Sam's face, plastered over his mouth like a surgical mask.

Laughing, Quinn got it for him, gathering up the trash and stuffing it into a paper grocery bag. She was about to get up to toss it in the waste basket, when Sam grabbed her wrist.

"I think we were in the middle of something," he said, and he leaned forward, kissing her.

Quinn dropped the bag and framed Sam's face with both hands, her lips parting eagerly. _Sam, _she thought, his name streaming through her mind, erasing all other thought except for the taste of him and the feeling of his arms winding around her waist.

By the time they stopped, clouds had rolled over the sun, thick and gray, and the air smelled of rain. They barely made it back to Sam's truck before the deluge started.

"You know," Quinn said, "I've always thought it looked really romantic in movies when the couple kissed in the rain."

In response, Sam pinned her against the driver's side door and kissed her again.


	3. Chapter 3

It was too soon.

She certainly wasn't going to _say _it, because she could barely allow herself to think it. But it still alarmed Quinn that she had come close several times now to just blurting it out.

The first had been when Sam was driving her home from the park. They had been at a stoplight, their hands intertwined between them on the seat. She was mesmerized by the way his hand was so much bigger than hers that it should have felt as if she was a doe caught in a bear trap, but it was honestly just really nice.

And then he had lifted her hand up to his and lightly kissed each of her fingers, even her thumb. Heat had flooded Quinn's cheeks, and Sam had leaned over and kissed those two bright spots as well.

The second time was three days after that, in Glee Club. Even though, at that point, it had scarcely been a week, everyone knew that Sam Evans and Quinn Fabray were—at Ms. Pilsbury and/or Rachel would put it—"an item". As Sam entered the room with Quinn on his arm, the club erupted into raucous cheering, which included Artie yelping, "Get it, boy!" and Santana saying something about Trouty Mouth.

Sam responded by scooping Quinn up into his arms like Superman with Lois Lane and carrying her to their seats.

Most recently, they had been laying in Quinn's bed last night, barely touching, just talking about nothing. Judy was at some club for divorced mothers, which she went to every Saturday and came back with smudged eye make-up but somehow happier. But as much as Quinn loved her mother, Judy could have been strapped to a gurney and force-fed chocolate pudding. The only thing that mattered was the sound of Sam's voice.

They had been together for exactly two weeks, and had spent the whole day with each other. Sam was talking about his brother and sister, how much he loved them and looked forward to seeing them when he got home from school every day.

If he hadn't turned his head at a particular moment to catch her gazing at him as if he was a can of tuna fish and she a starving stray cat—a mixture of adoration and raw desire—she wouldn't have come as close to saying it as she did. But then he laughed, that quirky, adorable half-smiling curling up one cheek.

"What?" Sam asked.

"I—" _Love you._

Quinn managed to catch herself just in time, finishing with a hasty, "—want to watch a movie." She had a feeling Sam knew what she was going to say, though, and thanked him with a few particularly passionate kisses for not pressing her.

Now, they were sitting in his car, staring at the weathered door of his little gray house. Sam was gripping the wheel so tightly that skin was stretched across his knuckles to the point where Quinn was genuinely worried that a few bones would pop through.

She gently reached over and loosened his grip on the wheel. "Sam, what's the matter?"

He shook his head mutely, not looking at Quinn. Her heart began to beat much too fast and her lungs shrank to useless lumps of cells in her chest. _He's breaking up with me, _she thought, and desperately reviewed every second of the past two and a half weeks. _Oh my God, he's—_

"Embarrassed," Sam was saying, and she forced herself out of her semi-hysterical reverie to focus on him.

"Wait," said Quinn blankly. "What? Why?"

Sam flung one hand in sharp, dismissive gesture that indicated the house in front of them. "You're like this princess who lives in this big, beautiful castle, and I'm the stable boy who lives in the village and bathes only twice a year."

The comparison was so ludicrous that Quinn almost laughed out-loud. It was only because of the carefully cultivated modicum of self-control perfected over years of being the HBIC that she was able to stop herself. "Sam, that's insane. I don't ca—"

"But you _will_!" he burst out, slamming the one hand Quinn had managed to free against the wheel with such force that the horn emitted a faint honk. "You will, as soon as you step foot inside that house and realize just how dirt poor my family is. I'm not good enough for you, Quinn."

Quinn made an odd yelping sound that held both contempt and dark humor. "Why, because my parents make more than yours? What other archaic ideas do you believe in, Sam? Feudalism? Slavery?"

He shook his head, still keeping his eyes on the front door. "You don't get it," he said softly. "I can't—I can't pay for dates, I can't buy you nice gifts for your birthday or Christmas or our anniversary, I can't—!"

Sam stopped talking, but that was only because Quinn has wrapped her hand around his mouth. "Are you done?" she demanded, and when he nodded, she pulled away.

"Listen, Sam," she said, "I don't care how much money your parents make. I don't care if you wear your dad's old shirts. I don't care about any of it. I love you because of who you are, and that's not going to change with any dollar amount—!"

"You—what was that last part?" Sam breathed, and Quinn stopped in midsentence, realizing her mistake.

She glanced out the windshield at Sam's house. She could see what must have been the dining room through the front window, and spotted a painting of a little girl by a garden well hanging on the wall by a china cabinet. As simple as it was, it must have taken the painter hours of painstaking work, and surely they had made a few mistakes.

But still, the end result was beautiful, and worth it.

"I love you, Sam," she said. "I—I know it's too soon, but—!"

She hesitated, her heart shifting into overdrive again, but Sam only smiled. "I love you too, Quinn."

With that, he hopped out of the cab and came around to her door, taking and keeping her hand as he helped her out. "And now I want you to meet my family."


End file.
